In Every Song I Sing
by beermestrengths
Summary: It's been two weeks since Finn's death, and there's still been no movement on the Mount Weather rescue front. Clarke can feel herself winding tighter with frustration with every day that passes without action, ready to snap at any moment. - Or, the one where Bellamy decides to go to Mount Weather after Clarke tells him not to.


It's been two weeks since Finn's death, and there's still been no movement on the Mount Weather rescue front. Clarke can feel herself winding tighter with frustration with every day that passes without action, ready to snap at any moment.

At this point, she's done with diplomacy, done with hours of strategy meetings with the remnants of the Ark Council, done with playing the emissary between Camp Jaha and Lexa's stronghold. She's done with arguing with Bellamy over dinner and with her mother in their quarters in the evenings. She's done with Raven's silence and Octavia's wary gaze. She's done with crying in the dark before she goes to sleep. She's just so tired of it all.

What she really wants is to crawl into bed and sleep for days, but she's haunted by nightmares of the boy with soft eyes and how his blood felt tacky, warm on her hands. How his breath hitched beside her ear as she slid Raven's knife between his ribs. It's not healthy, she's well aware. Getting maybe three hours sleep a night for fourteen days straight does nothing for her state of mind.

People keep asking her if she's okay. It manifests in various ways: _Have you slept? What have you eaten today? You doing alright?_ Random members of the Ark she's never laid eyes on in her life avert their eyes and nod their heads solemnly at her as she walks past in wordless gratitude. _Or maybe they're just ducking their heads to avoid eye contact with the teenager who stabbed her __boyfriend__ friend in the gut for a peace treaty._

_Why are you thankful,_ she wonders. _You would have given him up anyway. I just helped speed up the process._

She feels like she's hanging on by her fingertips. Hovering above a murky abyss that is all too eager to swallow her whole. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to stop fighting it. To give up. To give in to the sinking feeling in her chest every time she spots the red of Raven's jacket by the fireside.

It's easier not to think about it. She may be exhausted - with rescue plans and helping out in the medbay where she can - but the alternative is too dark, too terrifying, too all-consuming to even consider. _They have to survive,_ she thinks, _because if they don't, what was the point?_ The kids stuck in the Mountain have to survive if not for themselves for her own absolution.

The strangest thing to develop in this new world she's inhabiting, is something approaching a friendship with Lincoln.

Well, maybe friendship isn't quite the right word.

Companionable silence, maybe.

Clarke has been his primary medical attendant in the days after his reaper reversal; although Octavia has been eager to take over that particular duty. With the limited resources on the ground (oh, how she misses electricity) there isn't much to do except take his vitals and monitor his wounds for infection. It's not much but it helps stop the ghosts swimming in her memory, fraying her nerves. _Ghost. Singular._

Lincoln is good at being quiet, Clarke knows this from the first time she encountered him. She tries to bury that memory just as far down as the ones she has of Finn. It makes her feel sick to her stomach.

Their awkward silence had broken into something more amicable when he'd asked how she was doing the night after Finn. Had said he was sorry for her loss. Clarke thought of his face the day prior, set in hard lines and barely contained fury at Finn's actions. But now it was open, soft. There had been almost something akin to sympathy pooling in his eyes. Lincoln remembered the soft-hearted, floppy-haired peacemaker as much as she did, and she knew it must pain him to see what had become of him. So she had relented, gave up her anger at him, gave up trying to pretend she was okay for the sake of saving face.

In the days that followed, Lincoln gave her tips on Grounder etiquette for one of her many trips to Lexa's camp and Clarke brought him an old chess board to play with Octavia. She showed him the medicines they had on the Ark, and he (accompanied by the ever-watchful Blake siblings) had shown her how to shoot arrows at a moving target beyond the confines of the electrical fence.

So when Clarke strolled into Lincoln's room in the medbay on the fifteenth day since Finn's death to find it uncharacteristically empty, she knew something was off. It was curious - Lincoln rarely left the safety of the medbay (the stares from the Arkers were a lot to take) and never without Octavia. Clarke's brow furrowed as she chewed on her lip. _Huh._

She'd spotted Raven and Octavia sitting close to the Ark's makeshift kitchen, eating bowls of fruit, as she'd walked across the camp. Their heads were bowed and seemed to be having an intense discussion. It was all frowns and eyes scanning their immediate surroundings to check nobody was around to overhear. No Lincoln in sight.

Her feet retrace her footsteps out of medical and set a determined path across the grass towards the two girls sitting on logs eating breakfast. Only Octavia looks up as she approaches.

"Is Lincoln with you?" Clarke asks, trying to keep her voice even. She's not panicked or anything, she just wants to make sure he's alright. Wants to keep herself busy, and wandering around camp looking for a six foot tall injured Grounder was not how she'd planned to spend her morning.

Octavia glances at Raven for a moment, asking for help, but her eyes are set firmly on the blueberries on her spoon. She sighs and answers "Er, no. Not right now." Her voice ticks up at the end.

"Well, where is he then?"

It's then Raven lets her spoon clatter into her empty bowl and lifts her eyes to Clarke. She's barely looked at her in the last two weeks, each time her gaze carrying the fire and fury she spat at her the night it happened, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Raven clears her throat as she stands, refusing Octavia's steadying hand as she does so. She looks pointedly at Clarke and says "He's with Bellamy", before taking off in the direction of her quarters.

"Lincoln's with Bellamy?"

She asks, confused. Those two don't exactly have a stellar history of being amicable with each other. _There's that memory again._ Clarke tries to shake off the tiny shudder creeping up her spine as Octavia nods her head slowly.

"And he is...?" She trails off, indicating Octavia should finish the sentence for her. She's being oddly evasive, and something just seems off about the whole thing.

"Could be anywhere by now" the brunette replies, shrugging her shoulders. She eyes dart her eyes away from Clarke as she follows the path Raven took, dumping her bowl and spoon as she goes.

The camp is just waking up really, sun cresting above the horizon. She stands alone, a solitary figure in the dappled morning light watching her friend retreat before she can probe her with further questions on her brother and boyfriend's whereabouts. As she watches her go, Clarke feels sinking feeling brimming in her chest. A sick tug in the bottom of the stomach.

_What is going on?_

-

The camp has woken up some more, lively chatter drifting across the grass as Clarke rounds a corner a little too fast and smacks her head straight into Murphy's face.

"Jesus fucking Christ. What did I do to deserve that?"

He's rubbing a spot above his eyebrow with his fingers as Clarke winces her forehead in an attempt to dissipate the stinging there.

"You really want to have that conversation?" She spits, voice laden with malice. Clarke can't forget what he did to Myles, what he almost did to Bellamy. Certainly won't forget what he didn't do for Finn. Murphy rolls his eyes, they've had this conversation before.

He's still rubbing his forehead as she moves to leave, clears his throat and says: "Looking for our inimitable Rebel Leader, are we?"

Clarke stops her forward motion. It's true - her and Bellamy were usually at some sort of meeting by now. She hopes her face doesn't betray the gnawing feeling in her gut. If he knows where they are then she'll listen, but Clarke doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of holding that power over her.

So she stares at him, keeps her posture composed and noncommittal. She crooks an eyebrow up in a silent question, requesting further elaboration on his earlier point. Murphy grins, a glint in his eye and he almost laughs.

"It's funny, really. You coming to me for help."

"I didn't come to you, Murphy. I just ran into you. Literally. Have you seen Lincoln and Bellamy or not?"

"Not since they left this morning, no."

The colour drains from her face, because, what. Her brain whirs and the pieces fall into place, and she's so angry she could scream. They've been arguing about this since they returned from the Grounder meeting the day after she had killed Finn. Every journey to the Grounder camp, every shared meal, every evening by a fire. He'd pleaded with her to see sense, to see something needed to be done.

She'd wanted to relent. She really did. If they couldn't get The 47 out of the mountain, then everything they had done had been for nothing. Finn would have died for nothing. That single fact haunted her almost more than the memory of his blood on her hands. If they could liberate them, then. Then she might be able to sleep a little more than three hours a night.

But the anger and the grief and the fear was too much. She'd lost her father and Wells. Had lost her trust in her mother and Raven couldn't even look at her. She would not let him go in there, alone, and risk his life. She couldn't do it. The selfishness of it all ate her up inside, added to the crushing guilt she carried around in her heart every day. It was irrational and stupid (Bellamy had told her as much, of course) but, god, she couldn't face losing someone else. So it just wasn't an option.

But the impulsive, stupid, brave idiot had clearly decided enough was enough and left to rescue the kids from Mount Weather. He'd gone after she_specifically_ told him not to, after she told him- _Fuck._

Clarke turns on her heel and bounds towards Octavia's tent, heart thumping in her ears. _No no no no, this cannot be happening._ She pushes aside the fabric covering and sees Octavia sitting on her cot, eyes red rimmed, holding a radio in her hand. She looks stricken when she registers Clarke standing in the doorway, colour draining away from her face.

Then she's standing up, hands up in front of her, palms facing Clarke in a pacifying motion.

"When did they leave?"

Her voice is ragged, pleading Octavia to tell her it's not true. That she's misunderstood. If they have left (please say they haven't, please) maybe she can catch up with them, maybe she can talk him down.

Octavia sucks in a shaky breath to reply when the radio in her hands crackles to life.

_"Probably about to go out of range now, O."_

His voice is thin, static sputtering over the top, but it's clearly Bellamy. There's a moment of silence and then his voice is back again;

_"May we meet again"._

Octavia smiles through the wetness in her eyes and offers the radio to Clarke. Clarke fumbles her hands around it and presses down the large button on its side, lifting it towards her mouth.

"Out of all the stupid, reckless, moronic things you have done since we have been on this godforsaken planet, this has got to be the stupidest" She deadpans.

There's a beat, and then a tired chuckle over the hiss of the radio.

_"Valiant effort there, O."_

Clarke can practically feel his eyes rolling as he speaks. She glances over to Octavia who flashes a sad smile her way, shrugging her shoulders. But now Clarke is pissed. She wants to scream across the radio for him to turn around and march right back to camp. She wants to ask him why he has such a martyr complex and why he thinks his life is worth so little. She wants to tell him how completely she will absolutely fall apart if he dies during this mission.

_"Clarke,"_ he pauses. She wonders if he's weighing up his words, carefully selecting exactly how to phrase what might be one of the last things he ever says to her, _"I know you're not a fan of this move, but it will be worth it when I bring everyone back. I promise."_

But he can't promise anything. She knows that. He must know it too. So many things have the potential to go wrong, not least being captured and killed by the highly trained Mount Weather guards. Clarke finally finds the courage to speak, deciding that trying to change his mind at this point would be futile. Stubborn ass that he is.

"You're an idiot if you think I'm not coming after you."


End file.
